3 Things I Learned:
1. I have learned the value of a learning log. At the beginning of the semester, I was not sure of what we were supposed to be doing with our learning log and wasn’t sure if I was writing in it when I was supposed to or if I was missing out on something because I did not record questions in my log every day. After class last night and reading Daniels et al., I have realized the learning log is a valuable tool in the classroom. I realized that not only is it a great way to keep everything organized (index cards, sticky notes, WTL activities, and teacher feedback), but it is also a tool for students to track their own learning. I think it is important for there to be explicit instruction regarding the learning log in a middle or high school classroom. The students should know what the learning logs are for and when they should be writing in them.
2. I have learned that although when creating a lesson plan, I should start by planning the objective and assessment, it is okay to have students do ungraded writing activities. Before this semester whenever I heard the word assessment, I automatically thought of a standardized test. The assessment does not need to be a test or a formal paper. Depending on the objective, the assessment may be a variety of things including WTL activities. An assessment can be an exit slip to check if the students understood, for example, the definition of satire and irony after a class focused on the concept of those words.
3. I have realized the importance of working collaboratively with other student teachers or even just being able to ask them for feedback on a lesson in order to strengthen it. During our Monday night class with Rebekah on lesson planning, we took a moment to reflect on creating lesson plans with partners. Before this, for some reason I thought I would not like creating a lesson plan with someone else. I guess I had this idea in my mind that we were supposed to create our lesson plans one hundred percent independently one hundred percent of the time. Laura and I worked together to create a lesson plan about sensory language using E.A. Poe’s “The Raven” and it was an enlightening experience for me. We were able to bounce ideas off of each other to see if they would work in a way that I can not do when I am working on a lesson plan alone. I also liked that I could share my excitement about the lesson with someone. I have not written that many lessons, but when I am sitting at home and think of a great activity or idea for a lesson plan, my sister is less likely to be as excited as Laura or one of my other classmates.
2 Questions I Have:
1. How can we help students who are only focused on the product or the final grade recognize the value of the process of their work?
2. Many WTL activities include partner work (as does pair-share or elbow partners). What do you guys think about having students sit in pairs or groups of four throughout the classroom rather than in rows? What do you think are the pros and cons of such a classroom desk arrangement?
1 Goal for the Future:
One goal I have for the short term future is to ‘test out’ at least three of the writing to learn activities that we learned about in class on Monday on my students. I plan to find a way to incorporate them into my teaching time in my cooperating teacher’s classroom.
A long term goal I have for future learning is to implement a learning log in my own classroom in the future. I like the idea of the students having a place to store all of their writing. I also like the idea of students being able to see the growth of their learning log rather than handing back exit slips to them that end up at the bottom of book bags or their WTL activities written randomly in their notebooks.
Have you tested any of those activities yet?
ReplyDeleteToday, as you saw, Tyescha, Laurie, and I used the writing to learn activity of having a conversation on paper with the 9th graders and I think it went well! We asked Andrea ahead of time if she knew whether they had ever done this activity and she told us that she didn’t think they had, so we gave the students the rules of no talking and no writing inappropriate comments. In the first class, all of the students participated even though they seemed to not know where to start at first. After Tyescha, Laurie, and I started commenting on the papers, the students began to get more involved. In the second class, there were a few students who we needed to keep an eye on as they did not seem to want to participate in the WTL activity. I think another rule or expectation we could have set was that everyone needs to write a certain amount of times or that, as I think Rebekah suggested last week, they initial their comments for accountability. It was successful and I really enjoyed watching the students participate.
ReplyDeleteAfter the lesson you observed on Monday, I tried implementing a WTL activity with the afternoon class toward the beginning of class. I liked your suggestion of having two rows focus on Tom, two on Jim, and two on Huck, so I decided to try it out and assigned every two rows a character. I asked the students to jot down what they thought their character’s prepotent needs were in the first five chapters of Huck Finn. Right away, a student asked me if I was grading it. This is what I feared would happen and was not sure how to answer. I told him that it didn’t matter and that I was collecting it. Many of the students heard this exchange and I realized as I walked around the room, many students didn’t actually answer the question. Most of them wrote something along the lines of Huck’s prepotent needs is.... When I called on students, some of them said they needed more time to look in the book to find their answer. I think this WTL activity could have helped the conversation in the morning class, but the students in the afternoon class seemed to have no interest in participating in it since I was not grading it. I think if WTL activities like this are a part of the classroom routine, students would not question them as much.